Sean Tunney is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Portsmouth.
He has worked as a journalist on both national and local
newspapers and on the web, and has written on media history
and on British and European politics.

Based on previously unpublished material, this book tells the story of how the Labour Party transformed its relationship with British national newspapers and their owners.

This first book-length discussion of the subject spans over 30 years, from the period of the new left to the dominance of New Labour.

A key finding is that tension between Labour’s desire for newspaper coverage, and its policies for diversifying the press, has been an underlying pressure on party policies since the 1970s.

Labour sought to develop policies regulating newspaper
ownership and the role of journalists. It endeavoured to both correct
what it perceived as press bias against the Labour Party and to address
the broader issues of political and cultural diversity. Labour’s
Relationship with the Press provides a lucid analysis of how Labour’s
policies on the press sit within the context of the party’s
overall development – from Harold Wilson, through the party’s
flirtation with Robert Maxwell, to the robust approach of Tony Blair.
It offers a fresh insight into New Labour’s concern with press
management and political communications. The author demonstrates how
tensions of the past shed new light on Labour Party practices of the
present.

Hardback ISBN:

978-1-84519-138-2

Hardback Price:

£47.50 / $67.50

Release Date:

October 2006

Paperback ISBN:

978-1-84519-139-9

Paperback Price:

£17.95 / $32.50

Release Date:

October 2006

Page Extent / Format:

256 pp. / 229 x 152 mm

Illustrated:

No

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Labour in Government

1 Introduction: Labour's Problems with the Press 2 The People and the Press: Party Debates up to 1974 3 The Party, the Government, the Commission and its Minority:
Labour from 1974 to 1979 4 Flow and Ebb: Labour from 1979 to 1983 5 Changes and Political Communications: Labour in the 1980s 6 Policy Reviewed: Neil Kinnock and John Smith 7 Living with the Enemy: Press Policy under Tony Blair 8 Epilogue and Concluding Remarks: How Did We Get Here?

Notes
Bibliography
Index

The British
Labour Party began serious discussion of the media and their relationship
with political democracy in the early 1970s. The policies that emerged
from this ran into disagreement and were gradually abandoned. Sean
Tunney sets out to explain why Labour’s press policy was not
implemented. This takes him steadily through the shift in this policy
from canvassing structural changes in the newspaper market in order
to deal with the problem of concentration of ownership, to developing
a political marketing strategy and placing emphasis on effective presentation
and spin… His book presents a clear-sighted survey of the shift
from the Wilson period to now, and offers a new look at New Labour’s
close attention to press management and managed political communications.
It deserves to be widely read.European Journal of Communication

Tunney details the emergence, in the 1970s, of pressures from
trade unions and party members for reform of press ownership and control.
These culminated in the radical proposals of the 1974 discussion document,
The People and the Media, elements of which influenced the 1983 election
manifesto. Differences existed between those who wanted to promote
diversity and others concerned with getting Labour a voice in the
national newspaper market. A succession of electoral defeats (1979-1992)
and the accommodation of the Labour and trade union leaderships with
the neo-liberalism of the Thatcher years, left progressive policies
on ownership, diversity and right of reply behind.
... This book is a record of failure,
despite tremendous efforts of analysis, time and imagination by reformers,
to democratise mass communications. Yet it is also an account of the
complexities of trying to change press policy and a rich record of
the proposals devised to improve the media. To influence the future
we need to understand our past. Labour and the Press provides
readers with an indispensable aid to understanding and a platform
for reflection on future strategies for change.
Tom O’Malley, Free Press

Tunney explains why Labour has been
so troubled by its relations with the press and why this relationship
still matters. His very thorough research
critically scrutinises a variety of radical Labour proposals for press reform
since the 1960s, explaining their shortcomings, as well as the problems they
were designed to solve. His book also traces the origins of New Labour’s
reconciliation with the press oligarchs, exposing the logic and consequences
of a communications
strategy based upon resignation before - often active endorsement of - the plutocratic
status quo.
John Callaghan, Professor of Politics in the History and
Governance
Research Institute, University of Wolverhampton

This is a meticulously researched book which, by drawing on a wide
range of primary sources, throws a great deal of light onto a hitherto under-researched
aspect of media policy in Britain. Its charting of the developments and shifts
in Labour policy towards the press illuminates not only changes in Labour thinking
on the media in general, and the press in particular, but also the processes
which gave rise to, and have sustained, the whole New Labour project. This
should be required reading for anyone interested in either the British press
or in the changing nature of the Labour Party since World War II.
Julian
Petley, Professor of Film and Television,
Brunel University

This well-researched and tightly argued book on partisan politics and
media policy making in Britain has valuable lessons for people concerned about
the
interplay of journalism and effective self-governance worldwide. It is one
of the most important books in media studies in years.
RobertW.
McChesney, author of The Problem of the Media

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